Holding On For Life – Broken Bells
Heard 8/2/2017 around 5:30 at Chipotle (Fallsgrove)
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
2017 XPoNential Music Festival, July 28-30, Wiggins Park (Camden NJ)
General – skipped Friday for a variety of reasons (absence of anyone I
really wanted to see, ominous weather forecast that caused the organizers to
completely abandon the River Stage, etc.) … Saturday was mostly cloudy and
cool, but wound up with only a few minutes of light rain around 3:00 … Sunday
was sunny and much warmer, but with some breeze … Cosmic was there as usual
with wraps, as was the BBQ place that had jambalaya … parking was billed as “extremely
limited”: didn’t have the big lots just south of the bridge, but lots on
Federal Street were actually closer and had plenty of spaces when I arrived at
10:30, an hour before the gates opened
Saturday highlights
Preservation Hall Jazz Band – with no thunderstorm to cut things short
this year, the band put on an amazing show, featuring the Latin-flavored self-written
tracks “Santiago” and “La Malanga”
Rhiannon Giddens – hard to put her in a box; shows up most prominently
on Amazon under “Traditional Folk”, but with plenty of spiritual, blues, and
Creole thrown in … best songs were “We Could Fly”, “Get It Right The First Time”,
“Freedom Highway”
Sunday highlights
David Bromberg Quintet – I didn’t know exactly what to expect from 70s
icon David Bromberg and his 5 bandmates, but they did a great set; the crowd in
front of the stage refused to leave until they came back from an encore.
Folk-tinged blues (or maybe blues-tinged folk?) with exceptional musicianship
and a lot of hilarity throughout – their performance of “Sharon” was one or two
orders of magnitude beter than the studio recording, which is worth listening
to in and of itself.
The Record Company – No one around today rocks any harder than these
three guys, which they proved for the second year in a row. Guitarist and lead
vocalist Chris Vos first tossed his guitar pick into the standees (I wasn’t
quite quick enough to snag it), and followed up later by tossing one of his
harmonicas to a 7-year-old (?) kid wearing a red Record Company T-shirt, but
the music was more than enough to satisfy, starting with “Broken” (their latest
single), with other highlights being “Rita Mae Young” and “Off The Ground”. As
with Bromberg, the crowd demanded (and got) an encore.
Also worth mentioning – opening two sets by local favorites No Good Sister (country) and Hardwork Movement (hip-hop), Sweet Spirit (really rocked,
although I’m still not a big fan of “The Power”), Marina Stage set by Joseph
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